Education Funding
Public Schools Fully Funded for 2024-2025
After 16 consecutive years of underfunding that resulted in a cumulative loss of $3.5-billion to Mississippi’s public schools, public education in 2024-2025 is fully funded under a new law passed in the 2024 Legislative Session. The Mississippi Student Funding Formula (MSFF) replaces the Mississippi Adequate Education Program as the state funding mechanism for public schools.
In recent years, Mississippi has increased its investment in state-funded pre-k dramatically, appropriating a total of $55.6-million for early learning in 2024-2025. Salaries for teachers and assistant teachers have risen substantially. Investments in reading and math coaches have yielded strong academic results. Yet, vast gaps remain.
To be successful, children need high quality early childhood education, an excellent teacher in every classroom, an excellent leader in every school and district, and enough time on task to master the skills our standards require.
Many districts need resources to hire teachers for advanced classes including STEM and high-tech programs such as robotics, expand counseling and remediation services, hire dyslexia therapists, provide extended school day programs, and purchase books, technology, and materials to enhance teaching and learning. Districts remain in desperate need of facilities funding as buildings age and become more expensive to maintain every year.
Mississippi Student Funding Formula
Mississippi’s new funding formula, adopted by the Legislature in 2024, is very much like the old formula, the Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP). It begins with a base student cost that is determined by an objective formula which has four components:
- Instructional
- Administrative
- Ancillary & Support
- Operations & Maintenance
FY2025 Base Student Cost total = $6,695.34
Additional needs-based funding is added in nine categories as percentages of the base student cost, as was the at-risk component of the MAEP. This is the primary way that more funding is directed to higher-need districts. The nine components and their associated “weights” are:
- Poverty – 30%
- English Language Learners – 15%
- SPED I – 60%
- SPED II – 110%
- SPED III – 130%
- Gifted – 5%
- CTE – 10%
- Concentrated Poverty – 10%
- Sparsity (district qualifies if fewer than 8 students per mile)
Needs-based funding for a district is based on the percentage of students qualifying in each category.
Read a full description of calculations for base student cost and needs-based funding here.
The local contribution is the portion of the total district funding that is the responsibility of the local school district and is generated through local property taxes. A district’s required local contribution is the value of 28 mills or 27% of the total district funding (base cost and needs-based funding), whichever is less. In the new formula, the 27% is applied after the needs-based/weighted funding is added, so it requires more of wealthier districts than did the MAEP.
District state funding allocation =
[Net enrollment * (Base student cost + Needs-based funding/weights)] – Local contribution
Note that the new formula uses net enrollment, not average daily attendance, which also helps low-wealth, rural districts that tend to have higher rates of absenteeism.
There will be a full recalculation of the formula every four years (just as with MAEP) and in the intervening three years, the base student cost is adjusted for inflation by multiplying 25% of the prior year’s base student cost by the 20-year average annual change in the rate of inflation rounded up to the nearest tenth of a percent.
Written into the legislation is a provision that says that the base student cost can never be lower than the prior year’s base student cost. Another provision in the law allows the Legislature to use the lower prior-year base cost in years in which state revenue declines.
